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May 24 7 tweets 2 min read
The Village Idiot
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Anton Sukhinski lived on the edge of society in the town of Zborow, Poland; no friends, no family; his home a rundown shack.
The townspeople called him “the village idiot”.
When the Nazis came, they immediately killed 1000 Jewish men, and herded the Image 2/n remaining Jews into a ghetto.
Amidst this chaos was the Zeiger family, just a mom and dad with two little boys, and two orphans they were attempting to save. They turned to their former neighbors for help, but could not find one willing soul.
May 20 9 tweets 3 min read
The Day in Jewish History the Jewish Community of Crete was Lost at Sea
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At dawn on May 20, 1944, the Jews of Crete were arrested by the German army of occupation. Most of them lived in the Jewish quarter, in the Old Town of Chania, and were taken to the prisons of Agia. Image 2/n They were held there in inhumane conditions, as described by their (non-Jewish/Christian) friends who tried to contact them. Many had nothing to wear other than the clothes they were in at the time of their arrest.
May 12 5 tweets 2 min read
1/n Richard Stern enlisted in the German Army as a teenager and was awarded the prestigious Iron Cross for his distinguished service during World War I.
Later, Hitler would send the Hanseatic Cross to Stern for his war merit not realizing Stern was a Jew. Image 2/n Starting in 1927, Stern looked after his sister Martha and became the legal guardian of her son Rudolf.
On April 1, 1933 the day Nazis launched the boycott of Jewish owned businesses, there is a famous image taken of Stern in front of his Cologne bedding store. Image
May 11 4 tweets 2 min read
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“You’ve known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. We’ll have to wait and see if these grand illusions (or delusions!) will ever come true, but till now I’ve had no lack of topics. Image 2/2
In any case, after the war I’d like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. It remains to be seen whether I’ll succeed, but my diary can serve as the basis.”

Anne Frank
Diary, 11 May 1944 Image
May 10 6 tweets 3 min read
Erich Kästner
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“I... saw our books fly into the twitching flames and heard the corny little tirade of the wily little liar. Funeral weather hung over the town. It was disgusting."
Erich Kästner about the book burning on Berlin's Opernplatz on May 10, 1933 Image
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2/n on May 10, 1933, university students burned over 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books, presaging an era of state censorship & control of culture. On the evening of May 10, in most university towns, right-wing students marched in Image
May 9 7 tweets 3 min read
OTD, May 9, 1945, Theresienstadt was liberated
"For us the victory had come too late, much too late"
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When liberation came to Thereisenstadt, many hardly noticed. One moment the SS guards were there, and then they disappeared. “Our prison guards left us without a stir”, Image 2/n wrote Käthe Stark, “of which we were completely unaware.” Only a few days later, when the Red Army troops arrived, did the inmates really feel that they had been liberated. Yet for many survivors liberation was too much to bear. In an interview, one of the pioneers of Image
May 9 7 tweets 2 min read
February 18, 1943
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Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie (born 9 May 1921) , the leaders of the German youth group Weisse Rose (White Rose), are arrested by the Gestapo for opposing the Nazi regime. Image 2/n The White Rose was composed of university (mostly medical) students who spoke out against Adolf Hitler and his regime. The founder, Hans Scholl, was a former member of Hitler Youth who grew disenchanted with Nazi ideology once its real aims became evident.
May 6 8 tweets 3 min read
Carl Lutz - The Swiss man who saved tens of thousands of Jews
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Carl Lutz (30 Mar 1895 – 12 Feb 1975) was a Swiss diplomat who served as Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary, from 1942 until the end of the war. He is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews in a large rescue operation Image 2/n Lutz arrived in Budapest in January 1942 as Swiss vice-consul, and was put in charge of representing the Unites States, Great Britain, and other countries that had cut off ties with Hungary.
Weeks after the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, they began deporting Jews to Image
May 5 11 tweets 4 min read
May 5, 1945. Mauthausen liberated
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August 8 1938, Himmler ordered a couple of 100 prisoners from Dachau camp to be transported to the little town of Mauthausen just outside Linz. The plan was to build a new camp in order to supply slave labor for the Wiener Graben stone quarry Image 2/n Until 1939, most of the prisoners were put to work building the camp and the living quarters for the SS. The main camp of Mauthausen consisted of 32 barracks surrounded by electrified barbed wire, high stone walls, and watch towers. Due to the immense number of prisoners that Image
Dec 15, 2024 7 tweets 2 min read
Christmas - December 1944.
PRIMO LEVI was held at Auschwitz III (Monowitz)
Levi recounted the memorable Christmas of 1944
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Though they understood the war may soon be ending, Levi and his fellow prisoners knew nothing of their fate. Image 2/n So as December wore on and snow engulfed the camp and the factory where Levi worked, things both had changed and were the same as always.
Until Christmas: "It was a memorable Christmas for the world at war; memorable for me too, because it was marked by a miracle.
Dec 15, 2024 5 tweets 2 min read
15th December 1941:
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The photographic evidence taken at the Skede Beach massacre Liepāja, Latvia. Image 2/n Photo: Jews from Liepāja on the dunes of the village of Šķēde, north of Liepāja, where they were murdered, 15-17 December 1941. The 2,750 victims were apprehended in Liepāja; after selection they were brought to Šķēde, where they were marched to ditches dug in the sand. They Image
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Dec 14, 2024 6 tweets 3 min read
David Wisnia sang for his captors in Auschwitz to save his life
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David “Saba” Wisnia (1926-2021) never told his wife, children or grandchildren the whole truth about how he survived the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Image 2/n The family knew his singing voice had entertained the guards, and that his musical gift had changed his fate.

David was a prisoner of Auschwitz for close to 3 years. He stayed alive by singing to entertain the Nazi guards and cell block leaders. Image
Dec 13, 2024 8 tweets 3 min read
She lived an unspeakable hell. As both an inmate and head women’s doctor at Auschwitz, Dr. GISELLA PERL saved hundreds of lives with her bare hands.
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In 1944, Dr. Perl was working as a gynecologist, had just married a surgeon and was living in a Jewish Image
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2/n ghetto with her family in Hungary (modern-day Romania). In March of that year, Dr. Perl and her husband, son, parents and extended family were sent to Auschwitz, where they were immediately separated. Her young daughter, however, was hidden with a non-Jewish family.
Dec 13, 2024 6 tweets 2 min read
December 13, 1943:
The Kalavryta Holocaust - Greece's darkest hour
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Today, one of the worst atrocities in World War II history is remembered, when more than 1,200 male residents of the town of Kalavryta and surrounding villages were gunned down by Nazi German invaders. Image 2/n In November 1943, the German 117th Jäger Division began an operation to root out Greek guerrilla fighters in the mountainous area surrounding Kalavryta. During the operation, 77 German soldiers were captured by Greek rebels and killed.
Dec 12, 2024 7 tweets 2 min read
December 12, 1941
The Reich Chancellery meeting
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(1 day after the declaration of war against the U.S.),
was a meeting between Adolf Hitler and the highest-ranking officials of the Nazi party. Image 2/n Almost all important party leaders were present to hear Hitler declare the ongoing destruction of the Jewish race, yet it remains less known than the later Wannsee Conference. The announcement Hitler made on 12 December to the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter refers to an earlier
Dec 11, 2024 6 tweets 2 min read
Thursday December 11, 1942
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Twenty-seven-year-old SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Charles Entress, a Nazi physician, begins working at Auschwitz I. He is an ethnic German of Polish descent. He is considered to be one of the most cruel Nazi doctors in the camp. He sends thousands Image
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2/n of prisoners to death during selection, and sometimes, he executes the selected prisoners by injections himself and performs experiments on them. He always keeps a straight face; he sends people to their death without mercy. Often, his decision is made only after a fleeting
Dec 11, 2024 10 tweets 3 min read
The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak
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One of the most moving accounts of life and death in a Jewish ghetto under Nazi occupation was written by Dawid Sierakowiak, a teenager from Lodz. Dawid recorded his diary in five notebooks, beginning a few months before the war Image 2/n and continuing through April 15th, 1943. He wrote about a wide variety of subjects of importance to the ghetto residents as they struggled to survive the harsh conditions imposed by lack of food, medicine, and other basic necessities.
Dec 9, 2024 7 tweets 3 min read
In the female camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Stanislawa Leszczyńska received childbirths, trying to save mothers & refusing to kill newborn babies.
At least 700 babies were born in Auschwitz.
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1/n Image 2/n Most pregnant women at Auschwitz were simply sent to the gas chambers. Women who found out they were pregnant at the camp were sometimes given abortions. Often, when women were discovered to be pregnant they were summarily executed. When Leszczyńska heard what was expected of
Dec 8, 2024 11 tweets 4 min read
CHELMNO (Kulmhof), the first Nazi extermination camp, opened #OTD December 8, 1941.
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The first commandant was Herbert Lange. The camp consisted of two parts: administration section, barracks and storage for plundered goods; burial and cremation site. Image 2/n It operated three gas vans using carbon monoxide. The camp began operations on December 7, 1942, and ended on March 1943. It resumed operations June 23, 1944, and finally ceased operations January 17, 1945. The estimated number of deaths is 150-300,000, mainly Jews. Image
Dec 7, 2024 8 tweets 3 min read
NN - Nacht und Nebel - December 7, 1941
(German for "Night and Fog").
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Nacht und Nebel was a special punishment class during World War II to make resistance members disappear without a trace. The penalty class was instituted by the 'Chef des Oberkommando der Wehrmacht' Image 2/n Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel by order of Adolf Hitler. It was in France, during the autumn of 1941, that Hitler found a political pretext to justify his new measures, when a series of attacks were aimed at the German army on French soil. Thus, when the German police arrested
Nov 25, 2024 5 tweets 2 min read
The #Righteous during World War Two

Jan Zwartendijk, the angel of Lithuania
A Dutch Consul saved more than 2,000 Jewish lives

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One day at the end of June 1940, Isaac Lewin and his Dutch wife Pessla, both Polish Jews, knock on the door of Image
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2/n a certain Jan Zwartendijk in the Lithuanian capital Kaunas. In addition to director of the Philips Lithuania branch, the Dutchman has recently also become deputy consul. Isaac and Pessla want to leave for fear of the advancing Nazis and Soviets. They cannot apply for a visa Image